Donnell Pond Paddle

Trip Overview

The wind was up and the tide was wrong so we didn’t want to launch out into the mud at our RV Park so we went to Donnell Pond, public boat ramp. In Maine it is good to scout out the body of water proposed launch site. Many are private or don’t have any parking, or have parking with no parking for NON-residents. Donnell Pond is a lake that has public lands on the east half of the lake. “Pond” is a misleading term. It is a lake.

Donnell Pond boat ramp was recognized by our Google Maps.

The boat ramp parking is up hill. Up the driveway next to the boat ramp. Water at the gravel ramp is clear and chilly. We arrived in summer. There is a “courtesy inspector” there when the volunteer shows up. He was looking to see that you didn’t have any grasses, barnacles, or other invasive on your boat or the trailer. He arrived as we were leaving with the boats on the racks on the truck. He didn’t want to see the boats. They usually want to know where you had the boat in the water last.

We paddled out past the houses and started around the lake counter clockwise near the shore. There were rocks. But most of them were near shore with steep drop offs. Near points of land, islands, and wire grass there were rocks near the surface. The water was clear in the whole lake. You could see fish in some of the more shallow areas. The deep areas are dark, likely from deep water and lack of sunlight. We saw cormorants, a king fisher and some other sea gull like birds. Oddly there weren’t any ospreys or eagles.

The east side of the lake lies in “Donnell Pond Public Reserved Land. It has camp sites with fire rings and picnic tables. There are a couple of public beaches. One, Schoodic Beach, seems to have car camping access with a hike carrying the gear. There were several tents too big for kayaks and no boats in the camp ground. The second beach, Redmans Beach, had similar camp sites but the campers came by boat. What I considered better would be the solo sites along the side of the lake. For example, Under the Mountain #1 and #2. They were located on the Schoodic Mountain, 1083ft , side of the lake. There is a trail to the top of Schoodic Mtn from Schoodic Beach.

We paddled around the lake and found more of the lake. There are some fingers and islands at the northwest end of the lake we didn’t paddle. Around 7 miles we started getting hungry and started taking direct routes to points. All in all we did 10 miles, in 3 hours, averaging about 3.2 mph. It was a good paddle.

PS.....there were a few ski boats at the houses but none came out when we were there.